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Thursday, October 1st, 2009 - 8:46am

What Gives?

We’re all freaking killing ourselves.

A few weeks ago I was feeling particularly rough about what direction life was headed between work, friends, our crazy passion for endurance events as a hobby, family, and everything else that needs to find a place in our lives. I actually felt like things might have been unraveling at the seams.

The responses people posted had one common thread: YES. Either people were feeling that they were burning out, or that they were already there, or were actually engaged in achieving multiple burnout.

Like it is normal. An expectation of our industry.

That is not acceptable.

I’m tired of seeing my friends across the globe at the wrong times. I shouldn’t be awake and neither should they! My friends on the west coast of North America? If you’re still awake and working at 3am when I’m waking up at 6 or 7 am, then something is wrong. Those in the UK and Europe? When I’m doing a bit of extra work at 9pm at night and its 3am for you? Not cool. My Kiwi and Aussie friends? Get. To. Bed.

I was honoured to speak at Webstock in Wellington, New Zealand in February this year. I was incredibly motivated by Mike Brown’s words. I’m paraphrasing, but Mike’s opening address resonated with me:

The work we are doing on the web is critically important. We’re working at building the most important communications network in history. What we do today matters. It matters for today, for tomorrow, forever – and it deserves our very best work. We owe it to each other, to ourselves, to everyone.

Doing our best means not burning out. That should be the accepted norm in our industry.

If you’re burning out (yes, I’m talking to you) something has to give — because if it doesn’t, we won’t be producing our best work. Be conscious in your choice of what gives though — if it is family, personal health and well-being, or our relationships with friends, we’re in a lot of trouble. Those are supposed to be the most important things. It seems that they are the ones that we take for granted or sacrifice first.

Over the past few months I’ve realized that the sacrifices I have made haven’t always been the right ones — partly because I’m conflicted. I’m sure we all feel this pressure in some way: in order to provide for my family I feel more pressure for the business to do more — take on more work, expand what we’re doing, have more income so that I can provide more comfort, more food, more whatever. more. more. more. But at the end of the day, it just feels like less and less and less.

I don’t know what everyone else is feeling right now, but I know where I am. So the question is, what gives? I have no clue. But it can’t be family or me. Those are the wrong things to compromise. I owe family and me, my very best, because what I do with them, matters.

Can’t remember who it was from, but I used to carry a clipping where a businessman gave his daughter this advice: “With your work, you don’t have to be the one who’s there the most, but you do need to be the one who’s the most there”. If you’re already giving 100%, then I think it’s a matter of learning to not feeling guilty when you close up shop after 8 hours. We can always do more, but the ROI isn’t always worth it.

I believe a good work/life balance will get you more profit in the long run!

Better attitude and awareness of the industry as you get older will make you more valuable… Instead of getting snarky, burned out and frustrated with the industry–possibly alienating you and expediting your burn-out.

I know VERY FEW people who have lasted more then 10 years in web dev and design that are positive, fun and excited about what they do. It’s sad.

I’m definitely there but I almost have no option but to continue on the path–after all I’m supposed to be happy I have a job.

I’m 44 and I’ve been struggling with good vision in only 1 eye for 9 years now (I have enough vision in the bad eye to cause confusion). I thought God was telling me something so I started trying to help with accessibility; especially for education. My group at work keeps telling me to persevere but they never give me the time and I have to do so much at home because priority is always for people who don’t like looking things up or similar scenario. Now economy is bad, layoffs have hit, and there’s more work with fewer people. Then after everything else I find I’m forming a cataract in my good eye. I know cataracts are not supposed to be a big deal but they’re not a guarantee either so I have to step up efforts so that if the surgery (when it’s time) doesn’t go well and I’m left legally blind I can still do something productive because it obviously won’t be design. The cataract I had in my bad eye formed and matured in a year … if this one goes at the same rate I may only have 1 year left.

Being “the most there” reminds me about being intentful in my decisions. If I’m with my children, I need to choose to be there in whole. It’s better to be not there than there but with your mind being elsewhere. Also, if I’m in a situation I don’t want to be in, why am I staying?

Also thinking a lot about the importance of focus, doing one thing at a time, all else can wait, stuff like that. Focusing on one thing and finishing it gives momentum, and momentum is a great motivator.

Seriously! It’s tough to find balance. I try to jettison everything that doesn’t add value to my life. This runs the gamut from physical clutter, to time wasters, to ending relationships with crappy people/clients. Obviously this isn’t always possible but I’ve found it helps me to frame my thinking that way.

Derek, your post is timely. The phenomenon you describe sounds almost identical to the dotcom bubble of the late-1990s.

I’ve noticed many of the same behaviours displayed by friends and peers around the world, especially by those who weren’t in the workforce during those years and, surprisingly, by many who were. It is a topic of conversation when we gather.

I learned to treat this phenomenon like a design problem. It’s been a surprisingly effective approach.

What gives? That’s for each individual to decide. They aren’t always easy choices.

Great post Derek – funny it’s been on my mind recently too especially after a colleague suddenly and unexpectedly died. That sort of thing really makes you step back and question everything.

One way I’ve heard is good for rationalising where a balance should be is to think about how you will look back on your life in 20 years time.

I definitely agree that family should come first, and I’m trying to work smarter rather than harder to maximise time spent working. Part of that is removing distractions which lead to little time actually being spent at the task at hand.

You know what I find most distressing these days? Every week I write an activityreport to my boss (who’s a very decent guy) and every week I feel like I’ve slacked all week long, or not done anything, or not done enough. He often comes back to me by email saying “good job!”, but I still feel bad most of the time.

Dan said: “I know VERY FEW people who have lasted more then 10 years in web dev and design that are positive, fun and excited about what they do. It’s sad.”

This makes me sad, but also sort of made me chuckle. Our industry seems pretty poor about recognizing it’s elders. It’s very much about who can shout the loudest and there is a lot of “what have you done (or more aptly, what have you said) lately?”

Some of use have been at this web thing for a REALLY REALLY long time. We’re like a bunch of cranky old people. I actually said a few days ago something to the effect of, “you have it easy with your fancy CSS, I remember when I had to code two completely separate sites, one for IE and one for Netscape.”

Heh. Whipper-snappers, let’s hope they learn from our mistakes by reading posts like this and taking it to heart. As a multiple burnout victim on the mend, I can say that backing off and letting things flow (read: don’t work so damn hard) seems to allow for much better work and a much happier attitude. It sucks that some of us have to hit the bottom to see that.

I was feeling burnt out too so I decided to try something drastic. Me and my wife quit our jobs, sold our condo, our cars, and most of our possessions.

In two weeks we leave for an indefinite amount of time traveling the US and Canada in a Winnebago. The plan is to do just enough freelance work to pay the bills (which isn’t much when you don’t have kids, a mortgage, or car payments) and explore more personal creative endeavors. (http://whereswalter.ca)

Never thought I would do this at 27 years old. I hope these waves of burnout inspire more people in our field to make some drastic life changes.

I believe our whole mindset on work, life, and careers is about due for a good ass kicking.

Seems to me that a lot of people agree that what we’re doing to ourselves is just not healthy. It needs to change in so many, many ways.

@Dan: you’re right — many people don’t last that long in this industry. I wonder though, if the same is true for other industries? I lasted 4 years as a teacher and I remember a statistic that most people (like 90% or so) that leave teaching do so in their first 5 years.

@Keith:

As a multiple burnout victim on the mend, I can say that backing off and letting things flow (read: don’t work so damn hard) seems to allow for much better work and a much happier attitude.

And thanks to you for your post a few weeks back. It gave me great pause and helped to crystallize a lot of my own thoughts on this. If we don’t share these kind of stories, we reduce the chances that others will learn from our mistakes or their own.

@Travis: Dude. That takes balls. 27 is a great age. That’s around how old I was when I quit my job after burning out in another field and started my company. Great things happen when you’re 27. Enjoy it for all it is worth — I’ll be watching the site to see your stories of growth and inspiration.

What Travis did is exactly the reason I’m killing myself at work right now.

Been doing 16 hours long days for 2 months or so, sometimes accepting more work than I can handle, sacrificing time with friends, family and myself. They all seem to understand and be fairly comfortable with it, though. None of them seems to feel that I have a “real” job, so that might be why. But in the end, I’m doing this for myself.

Idea is to have enough money in the bank as an insurance of sorts, and then grab my backpack and travel around. Life as people know it (go to school for the first 20 years of your life, then work till you’re so old you can’t really enjoy or do most of the things you’d like to do) is not what I want, and the nature of our work lets us work pretty much anywhere with a computer and internet access. Jackpot.

So why am I burning out? I figured a couple of years of really hard work was an acceptable price for the life I aim to get. I’m 23 and I’m halway through, so I’m happy.

I do take a break and give myself a day of rest every now and then, though. ;)

What gives, if you don’t make the decision for yourself before you hit the bottom, is your passion for everything. I am in the midst of taking a self-imposed hiatus from all but the most minimal amount of work i need to do to keep my job before I turn into one of those cranky old web people that Keith described.

Of course, this is easier to do when you are employed full-time by the state. Freelancers / self-employed folks will probably have a harder time doing that. But taking a little brain vacation seems to be helping me.

Great post! I agree. Three reasons: technology, knowledge work and wealth.

Technology allowed us to bust work out of the workplace and distribute it unevenly through our lives so that it can reach us wherever and whenever it needs to.

Working in teams across timezones and on projects for customers on the other side of the world is increasingly common (would have been almost unknown outside IBM, BBN and diplomatic service 30 years ago.) More of us work for globalised organisations, and more of us work for ourselves. In both cases, technology has allowed us to find the best team members, not just from our office, but anywhere.

When you’re a knowledge worker, you really can achieve much more by putting more in. When you’re working on an assembly line, punching out widgets faster than the rest of the assembly line can use them just creates a backlog. When you’re operating a cash register, your working hours are set according to when the customer expects to find your store open. As a knowledge worker there have been times when I’ve helped achieve enormous changes in the space of a frantic, crazy few days and nights. Doing it once or twice a year makes you feel like you have superpowers. But superpowers can be addictive.

Final reason: wealth. As knowledge workers we’ve seen how workaholics have created incredible wealth for themselves. Our heroes have become the borderline Aspergers Syndrome-afflicted founders of the latest generation of internet startups.

Nowhere in the media have I seen the celebration of young, intelligent leaders who’ve gone surfing for a month or worked for a charity overseas for a year. The people working the hardest are the people we have aspired to be.

I’m nobody’s hero — aside from my house and some memorable travel experiences, all I have from a decade spent in startup teams is reading glasses, a terrible posture and some great friends.

Isn’t a part of the culture the expectations that everyone has though? How many of us hold off sending an actionable e-mail on the weekend out of respect for the weekend?

There have been times when I’ve switched off for the day/week, only to receive e-mails, followed by Skype messages, sometimes even followed by phone calls to attend to something asap. In my support role, I can sometimes receive multiple emails from the same person over the span of a few hours demanding attention for an issue.

Isn’t a part of the culture the expectations that everyone has though? How many of us hold off sending an actionable e-mail on the weekend out of respect for the weekend?

There have been times when I’ve switched off for the day/week, only to receive e-mails, followed by Skype messages, sometimes even followed by phone calls to attend to something asap. In my support role, I can sometimes receive multiple emails from the same person over the span of a few hours demanding attention for an issue.

PS: Yes, my blog is down, I haven’t deployed it to a new host after closing my old hosting down because – I’ve been so busy moving to San Diego to follow work, starting a new job, finding somewhere to live , flying back to Australia to sort out my visa, working 16 hour days, having the funding pulled from that project, mountain biking, getting another job, establishing a credit rating, buying a car, hiking, finding a house, learning Spanish, moving my wife, two kids and two dogs to San Diego, learning sass & haml and teaching them to my team, buying new 110v electrical appliances, enrolling my kids in a new school, going to the beach, spending time with my wife, going to Mexico, going for walks around Lake Miramar, buying new furniture – all since June 1st.

Burnout? No time, too busy living and loving life. 10 years? Try 18 since my first website and still learning new stuff and loving the web more than ever. Now really, life isn’t going to live itself.

in order to provide for my family I feel more pressure for the business to do more — take on more work, expand what we’re doing, have more income so that I can provide more comfort, more food, more whatever. more. more. more.

But is the pressure you’re putting on yourself warranted? If your family is happy with the comfort, food, whatever they have now, why push yourself harder to provide more?

I know our society is geared towards acquiring new things, having the latest and greatest (probably more prevalent among people who work with technology constantly too), and that the trend across all industries is to be working more hours (Australia apparently is one of the worst offenders in this category), but you said it yourself, what you do with your family matters, so it comes down to a question of what is more important: what you do with your family as opposed to what you do for them.

@jason king HEAR HEAR Sir! 15 for me. Wait till you go thru a dotcom exp then you’ll know you’re alive. I only employ people who see working in the Net industry (not the same as the web kids!) as a vocation. It’s a brave new world out there. It constantly changes overnight. Get on with it or get out of the way.

After suffering through at least one case of web burnout, I pretty much nod my head when anyone says anything about people on the web working themselves to an early grave. It’s just not worth it. Work should help give your life purpose and meaning but not at the expense of being able to live a life. There’s a whole world outside and away from the internet and it’s really easy to forget that as we’re all so caught up in a new this or a new that.

I wrote a piece of A List Apart that was published back in May on just this topic for those that may not have seen it.

Hang in there Derek. Anytime you want to chat, you know how to get a hold of me.

I experienced a burnout three months ago, so I just quit the job on an startup I was working on but keept myself on touch with the medium through podcasts, posts, etc. now I’m comming back… I think is the way to do it if you still love the web, as I do.

I definitely agree with the sentiment here, Paul. Personally, I’ve been struggling with work/life balance ever since I started my own Web design firm. I don’t think the entrepreneur’s life lends itself easily to this kind of balance. I must say, the discipline of taking time away from the computer, for family, friends, hobbies, etc., is one that’s extremely hard to achieve. I guess I’ll attribute that to the obsessive personalities that many Web designers and devs have. At any rate, work/life balance is worth achieving. Here’s hoping we all can do it, in these trying economic times.

@Andrea: Is Twitter time a whitespace killer? I guess it depends on how you’re using it and how often :) For me, it isn’t an all the time thing, and I try to limit it to short bursts to see what is going on around me. It doesn’t always work, of course. Hmmm. I’ll have to think about this a little bit more…

Derek said: “We’re working at building the most important communications network in history.”

The communication network is already built. We may have perverted it at little from its original purposes.
I understand that, originally, the Web was supposed to be a place for sharing knowledge, and business weren’t going to be allowed on this place.

But it seems we discovered that it can help doing new business, and now the Web is part of the machinery that let people make money… money out of nothing:

Good on you Gary – I think that slowing it down is something we should all be doing. It’s hard to say no though, especially when it’s all stuff you love.

I too am taking a break from community obligations so I know exactly where you’re coming from. Hopefully a bit of extra white space will mean that when we are ready to spend more time giving back to the community again, we will be doing it with 200% enthusiasm.

Gary – I have known you from the pre-AWIA days when you first rocked up as a consultant to look at our CMS, you had a lot of energy then and amazingly still do – your passion for the industry and knowledge of all things web are deep and you have created a void that will be missed and hard to fill. But you are right sometimes you come to a stage where something has to give and quality of life as Kelly so eloquently presented is a lot more important.

I will still be tweeting or emailing you for advise and hope to still be having a beer with you when both of us have zimmer frames